Q: Mengele, Unmasking the ”Angel of Death”

A:

• Influenced by Wiesenthal’s, Murderers Among Us

• Chief investigative research Justice Department

• Former director, Museum of Jewish History, NYC

• Klaus Barbie case

• US Government complicity?

• Manhunt for Mengele

• Israel & Germany part of effort

Q: What early influences shaped Mengele?

A: 

• Unremarkable childhood

• Wealthy, established family

• Gunzburg Bavaria

• University 1930

• Medicine & Anthropology

Q: How did Mengele’s studies mold his view of racial hygiene?

A:

• University: exposed to racial theories

• Received two doctorates – Medicine & Anthropology

• Studies under elite teachers

• Rudolf Hess: Nazism = applied biology

• Racial Hygiene, enshrined by Nazi government

Q: What was Mengele’s trajectory in the S.S.?

A:

• Initially a Wehrmacht physician

• Joined SS

• Served in Posen

• Attached to 5th SS Viking

• Stationed in Ukraine – Operation Barbarossa

Q: What records exist regarding Mengele’s “experiments” Auschwitz?

A:

• Few actual records of Mengele’s experiments

• Problematic area to fully reconstruct

• Reliability of prisoner testimony

• Colleague physicians provide good source              

Q: What “experiments” did Mengele conduct at Auschwitz?

A:

• Pre-Auschwitz Mengele spent time at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

• Number of areas of interest

• Noma oral cancer

• Eye Color and race

• Protein research

• Physical Anomalies -Dwarves, Giants

• Gypsies, Twins

Q: How did Mengele escape after the war?

A:

• Left Auschwitz January 1945

• Berlin to Breslau to Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp

• Worked in Field Hospital

• Did not have SS Tattoo

• Released from prisoner of war camp

• Farm laborer for three years

• Austria to Italy to South America

Q: Was Mengele part of a post war Nazi organization?

A:

• Hard to say

• Part of German community

• Met Adolf Eichmann in South America

• Aided by right wing Germans

• Helped him relocate from Brazil to Paraguay

Q: How did Mengele elude capture in South America?

A:

• Initially no one looking for him

• Received German passport in Argentina

• Married & lived under own name

• Heard German police came to hometown

• Moved to Paraguay & falsely secured citizenship

• After Eichmann capture went to Brazil, false name

Q: Did the Mossad come close to Capturing Mengele?

A:

• Eichmann was prime target

• Mengele, secondary one

• Initially well-funded

• Came close a few times

• Some wild goose chases

Q: How was Mengele’s Death discovered & confirmed?

A:

• Reports of drowning

• Body exhumed

• No soft tissue, problem with water

• Medical records from Mengele notes

• X-rays & dental records

• 1986 Conclusions, not conclusive

• 1992 Science caught up

• DNA typing as forensic tool

Q: What are Mengele’s autobiographical notes?

A:

• Notes found in South America

• Written as novel

• 100 pages on his birth

• Almost no mention of Auschwitz

• Details on farm & escape

• University studies

• Connection to science & teachers

Q: How do you teach Mengele & Evil?

A:

• Separate Mengele from persona

• Took on symbolic status

• Attempt o deconstruct the man

• Real from the imagined

• Unsettling truths

• Watch out, tame, science & medicine